Note: The version of the game that was provided and used for this review was Doodle Jump Journey for Nintendo DS. The game was received very late during the height of the Christmas rush and was assigned to a Lab Rat for review play, and was originally intended to be included in the Christmas game reviews.Doodlebug is a kid-friendly game suitable for all player audiences.

Introduction

Doodle Jump Adventures / Doodle Jump Journey was released both via the Nintendo eShop and as a boxed retail game for Nintendo DS and 3DS on 5 November 2013, under the Action-Adventure category (the game is really an Action-Adventure and Platformer game).

Published by Game Mill Entertainment and developed by Smoking Gun Interactive Studios, the Nintendo DS version of the game is the fully-functional port of the primary version found on the iOS platform, minus the full set of unique game play environments, while the version for 3DS has expanded environment and game play present.

Doodle Jump was originally a platforming game created by Lima Sky Studio for mobile game platforms, with full versions having been released for Android, Blackberry, iOS, Nokia Symbian, and Windows Phone. It has also had transportable versions created using Java Mobile and HTML5. A version was recently released for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 utilizing its Kinect motion-sensing controller.

Strictly speaking the game is widely considered to be typical of the platforming genre of games, and is known widely for its significant success in terms of sales and download stats — at its peak the game was being downloaded at a rate exceeding 28,000 times a day — and informally was declared the “Game of the Century” in a poll of mobile gamers.

The lack of well-engineered and interesting titles on mobile platforms may have had a significant influence on its early popularity, as the game was (and to some extent remains) an influential element in mobile gaming circles almost certainly as a result of it being intentionally engineered to shine in that environment.

That is not to say that it was a situational hit mind you, because its porting to non-mobile platforms like the Xbox 360 and later, the Nintendo DS platforms, serves as proof of its quality and entertainment depth.

Very few games have had the initial impact and the staying power in gamer retention that Doodle Jump has enjoyed — in fact other than Angry Birds we are hard put to point out a more successful game — with proof of its wider appeal being found in the rate at which it has been pirated.

Standup Arcade cabinets with a pirated version of the game are popular throughout Asia and, in particular, in Hong Kong, Singapore, and some of the coastal Chinese mainland cities with access to the Hong Kong markets. The mobile versions of the game number among the most pirated games in Asia at the time this review was written.

Part of the secret to the success of the game is its simplicity and the manner in which its score-based game play feeds into the very strong immediate-gratification value the game offers for its player base.

The premise of the platform-style game is simple enough: a four-legged creature known as the “Doodler” is made to ascend an ever-increasing number of unending platforms, going higher and higher, and with each new platform level, gaining a greater score.

In the original game the character was controlled by tilting the game play platform in the direction that the player desired the character to move, and for platforms that lacked the motion-sensing mechanism used for the primary control, this process was emulated by clicking or tapping in the desired direction.

While that control scheme is not unique, by combining it with the unique environment and the cute character, the popularity of the game is easy to understand, as was its destiny to be ported to Apple’s iPad platform, being as how the concept for the game and that game platform seemed made for each other.

With that in mind, the combination of the control scheme, the cute character, and what we can only consider to be a higher than usual addiction level, its porting to the DS/3DS platforms was also pretty much expected, since it is the best path towards putting the game in the hands of younger gamers, for whom the game and game play are a natural fit.

Game Play

Using the cute Doodler as its focus, game play consists of guiding the four-legged Doodler from platform to platform in an unending quest to go higher and higher, all the while avoiding bad things like black holes, “baddies” (the antagonist character for the game) and nose balls, while at the same time seeking out and collecting a variety of special items ranging from jetpacks to special collectibles.

Game play progresses through unique environments that, depending upon whether or not you have the 3D hardware on your platform engaged (that means if you are playing via the Nintendo 3DS basically) each environment can have its own special impact upon play.

The primary mechanism that is used for controlling the Doodler is to tilt the platform from side to side and in the direction of play — all the while taking special care to avoid causing your Doodler to fall — using different objects found in each level like the jetpacks, propeller hats, rockets, springs, or trampolines, to obtain a temporary boost.

In addition to the baddies and other monsters that the player needs to either avoid, jump over, or shoot depending on the circumstances, the true enemy that your Doodler faces is yourself.

That limitation and threat is caused by the player relaxing their awareness or attention, or growing too confident in the ability to control the Doodler.

When that happens the result often takes the form of the sort of mistake that cause the Doodler to fall from the platform, or come into contact with an enemy or worse, a destructive object. The worse case scenario is the character being abducted (actually just touching it is enough) by a UFO – and we all know why that latter is a bad thing!

Among the many attractive aspects of game play are the unique levels that the player will reach — in the DS version those are the jungle, space, and ninja worlds, while in the 3DS version they include an expanded set of environments.

No review of the game can be offered without including the following warning: This is an addictive game. Game play, particularly in the endless-play version upon which the DS version is built, is very hard to stop.

At least part of the secret to the success of this game has to be its cute and friendly protagonist -- the Doodler -- and the instant-gratification found in its seemingly endless levels and quest for just one more point...

Lab Rat’s Take

Our Lab Rat for this review is an 11-year-old male gamer who prefers handheld gaming over console, and who has a large collection of games for his 3DS. A regular reader of Game On, this is the first game that our Lab Rat has reviewed.

His parents feel that the experience was a positive one, and encouraged him to both take notes about his impressions, and be creative in sharing his impressions of the game and the path that the review process took him on as part of the process.

“When I first started playing the game I wondered what the story was but I learned from my Dad that there was not a story and that was OK because my Dad explained that this was how video games used to be, back when they were all about fun and not about stories.

“I wanted to understand how a game not having a story could be something that makes it more fun, and my Dad explained that game stories are not really a bad thing, but sometimes it is nice to have a game that you play because it is fun to play, not because you want to learn what comes next or solve a mystery.

“Games that don’t tell stories are mostly arcade games and back in the old days of the 1980s which was way before I was born most games were like that.

“Some of my Dad’s favorite games were Donkey Kong, which he says does not really count because it did have a story, but also a game called Asteroids, which my Dad says was more fun than the law allows, and a game called Lunar Lander that it helped a lot if you understood inertia to play.

“Doodle Jump has a lot in common with the best games from the old days, like the game Centipede, and Pac Man, or my Mom’s favorite game which was called Frogger.

“Playing Doodle Jump was a way for me to experience what it was like when my parents were kids, because it is a game that is like the games that they played when they were kids, except that you had to pay a quarter to play them and you couldn’t take them with you on trips or play them in your car.

“Doodle Jump starts out with you at the bottom of a very tall place and your job is to jump up to platforms that are above you.

“You keep jumping up and you avoid bad guys and dangerous things that are put there to be obstacles, but you also can collect special things that make you able to jump higher, or are worth more points.

“Doodle Jump is about getting points, but also about not falling but when you do fall you can land on a platform so falling does not always end your game.

“It’s a good thing that you don’t have to pay quarters anymore to play games because if you did playing games like Doodle Jump would be very expensive because once you start playing even if you don’t do very well you still want to play more.

“When I play the game I play it for at least an hour. I would play it for longer than that but I only get an hour to play games on school days but if I could play it as long as I wanted I think I would play it for hours. It’s that fun.

“I have a lot of games for my 3DS to play and my favorite games are Pokemon Y, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, and Mario Kart 7, but now Doodle Jump is my favorite game. My sister likes Kingdom Hearts 3D and Pokemon X on her 3DS but now that she has tried Doodle Bug she likes it a lot too so I have to get it back from her when I want to play it.”

Our Lab Rat estimates that there are hundreds of hours in Doodle Jump for the typical gamer, and feels that the game earned a score of 10 out of 10. He believes that the addictive nature of the game makes finding a replay score impossible because he “always wants to play it” so as a compromise gives the game a “very high” replay score.

My Take

While the mobile games scene has served as the germination environment for a large number of video games that then made the leap from the (comparatively) small screens to the larger displays of traditional game play platforms, very few games manage this while making a solid impact upon the cultural identity of the era in which they are launched. The Doodler numbers among the rare exceptions.

We would be practicing deception if we were to say that we did not enjoy it when we get to review this sort of game — or any game that manages to capture the imagination of the gaming public to such a degree that it receives what can only be described as homages from within that community.

Take for example the phenomenon of the cameo — and its inside-nod that the Doodler has frequently enjoyed in other games completely unrelated to it… Some good examples of that include Doodler’s appearance in games like Finger Physics, The Creeps, Parachute Panic, and Pocket God just to name a few.

Then there are the sort of cameos that are easier to miss, such as the Doodler’s appearance in mainstream television shows like The Big Bang Theory, where it had not just one but two significant cameos, both of which naturally enough come in the form of Sheldon Cooper, who is after all both the Geek’s Geek and a role model for smart gamers everywhere. We cannot help but assume that he would take his preferred selection of video games with him in his iOS device when he makes the journey to the International Space Station…

Then there was the nod in a Sprint commercial to the addictive nature of the game, and its appearance in an episode of Parks and Recreation in which its addictive nature helps to form an addiction scale for purposes of measuring its life impact.

It is not that this impact in the cultural memory makes the game any better — or worse — or that they serve as a means to measure its popularity, because they don’t. It is popular because it is a great game, but these cultural references do perform a valuable function in that they help to balance the cultural references that are found inside the game! Because this is a review, we will not be exploring that side of the equation, but you should know that the game itself contains a slew of popular culture references, though well masked, begging the question just how many can the average player find?

Due to the time of year and an already over-stretched game play schedule, it was necessary for us to assign this one out to a Lab Rat for review play – though we did slot this puppy into our DSi and give it a go not just because we need to do that in order to facilitate the proper translation of the Lab Rat’s review post-review, but also because we wanted to, having played previous incarnations of the game via both iOS and Blackberry.

What we found is a game port that properly embraces the essential philosophy of the original game, particularly in terms of immediate gratification and the tongue-in-cheek presence of its own awareness.

This is a game, after all, whose designers thought it would be funny to include the scribbled high scores of other players in the level background so that when you reach and pass them you have an experience similar to that of drivers on the Road of Bones (Russia’s M56 Kolyma Highway) in which you have passed the best efforts of that player or perhaps surpassed, since you are doing better than they did?

Of course the difference here is that we can safely feel a bit smug and superior without also having to explore the question of just what happened to the person whose wreck we have passed? Hopefully they hit replay and gave it another go!

The infinite-seeming levels that we move through grow increasingly more challenging due to the dangers that lurk upon them – dangers far more risky than simply missing the next platform and falling back – but not so dangerous that we feel our hear rate increase or sweat breaks out on or brows.

From strictly an intellectual point-of-view there is certainly a strong feeling of accomplishment to be found in perfectly executing a level and achieving three stars, but in some ways the creative manner in which the different obstacles have been implemented sends a different message to the player — a message that seems to say “No matter how good you think you are, I will break you.”

It does not take long to realize that the objects that exist in each level — and particularly the boosts and utility objects — were not randomly inserted in the level. They are there because you need them, and so your failure to both realize that and to make use of them where — and when — you should, ends up being one of those forehead-slapping realization moments that turn into a lesson you are not likely to forget.

While our initial exposure to the game was via the original mobile version (with its far cheaper mobile price tag) that experience did not prove to be an impediment to either recognizing the efforts that were made to enhance the game for this new portable hand-held platform, or leave us wondering why it was made.

The mobile version may still be the ideal form for letting Doodle loose on the platform (or in the seat) on the T (the “T” is Boston’s mass-transit train) for practically every other environment this new version and its much more robust and enjoyable platform offers players a more satisfying feel to game play, which makes all the difference.

After giving game a review play far longer than we should have due to time constraints, after passing the game to our Lab Rat we took the time to add it to our post-Christmas shopping list because it was so enjoyable we needed to own our own, personal copy.

Doodle Jump Journey for Nintendo DS earned a score of 8.0 out of 10, with a very high replay score, and as it has an estimated average play time of at least 100+ hours, gets an Average Admission Price of an obvious .19 cents an hour (and that AAP goes a long way towards compensating for the handheld price compared to the mobile price).

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A review copy of this game for Nintendo DS was provided by Game Mill Entertainment

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Blog Author

Chris Boots-Faubert

Game On is written by Cape Cod Times Columnist CM Boots-Faubert, who started gaming in 1972 on Pong, quickly moving on to the Atari 2600 and Intellivision when they were released. His current gaming systems include the Xbox360, PS3, Wii, NDS, and ... Read Full